[Android Head-Units] petesimon:
Join the party ☺♪♫

Wow! My eyes hurt from reading uh and sometimes scimming the first 40 pages and the last 10 pages of the thread. So it all convinced me to get a "ouku" style unit. I ordered a head unit on August 6 from hi5wholesale on ebay (item 290809455306) for $327.99 USD during a discount sale they had. I think Lightinthebox is the same seller. Model is TH881 (as shown on the motherboard).

The stock versions are:

Android 2.3.7 (yes you read correct not .4)

MCU 2.10.9-1-10-1 (but I mistakenly degraded to 2.10.6~ during a MCU "update")

System 2.13.11

DVD 2.13.11-1200wb

I'm quickly customizing/hacking on a table indoors with a ATX power supply, powered USB hub, USB keyboard, USB mouse, USB wifi dongle, and an USB pen drive attached. The unit tweaks out and music stutters if I plug in / unplug USB things while powered on. So best to power it down with power button, or 3 sec press of volume knob, or power supply disconnect. The last one works best. Plug in 1 or more USB thingees and power on and wait at least 2 minutes for it to settle. I'm testing about 6000 mp3 files on the USB drive while the external SD card has a few hundred files. Oh it got twitchy again, so I cleared cache of Download Manager and Media Storage, and power cycle. Had to install a file manager of course! :silly: and find Sygic app under /sdcard/Aura folder. Huh! What's Aura? A helper app Sygic Downloader was also installed and will magically download map sets. I also found some useful apps under /sdcard/App folder. Had to go Settings > General > Extra, code 123456 and change my radio region to US to get better FM reception. Huh! The shipment was from USA to USA ! Got youtube and flash player installed and playing most online videos: trick was to install and older version of youtube app from December 2012 or March 2013, but unsure which is better. Hey as long as it plays, uhm usually. You can get flash player from googl'ing "adobe flash player archive version" and get the apk "(11.1.111.64)" for 2.x / 3.x. and then youtube 4.2.16 apk from androiddrawer site. I don't have it root yet and I'm waiting for the right time to do that.

I made sure Menu > Settings > Applications > Debugging was enabled (already was). I connected a male-to-male usb cable to the rear usb port and later to the front usb port (with included adapter cable) to my windows7 computer. Nothing happened on either my computer or the head unit. I know my computer has working ADB drivers for two other android 2.3/4.0 devices, but there was no new entry or "unknown device" flag under Device Manager. Since the head unit is still stock, any task requiring root or superuser such as wireless-adb will not work. I guess this head unit does not have "device" mode or does not act as an "B" peripheral.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go#Device_roles

Linux localhost 2.6.35.3-01275-g8b36122-dirty #1033 PREEMPT Tue Apr 16 10:51:15 CST 2013 armv7l unknown

I'm glad I know something useful about Linux :good: I used Terminal Emulator and command "busybox uname -a". The installed "toolbox" is suckee. The GCC string was not shown. Y'all can look at my system info log on pastebin (remove space if needed) pastebin.com/YSG3hnMx

more pictures > http://imgur.com/a/eHXGr/embed#0

Beyond that I'm up for comments / questions and wanting to help here with Android apps' / Linux internals' issues... especially to figure out adb, root, bluetooth and all the the other firmware goodie-ness we want. Sooo now ~ without checking many pages of Russian 4pda.ru I'm looking for a rooted rom update that

keeps my versions intact

. Any solid ideas?

I'm very patient. :fingers-crossed: ya the stock radio is still rocking deadly in the car ♫.

Thanks all!